on 11/12/02 1:37 AM, Joel M. Sciamma at joelsciamma_at_compuserve.com wrote:
> The Newt is pretty good at adapting to different HW without any sense of
> either being cramped or inadequate. The system of views is very flexible =
in
> the way it responds to screen dimensions and orientations and the
> fundamentals elsewhere are sound in most areas - decent targets, consiste=
nt
> behaviours, unabiguous labelling, few modes etc.
But this doesn't change the fact that the Newton OS is a pen-based system,
and doesn't adapt well to the keyboard, and I can't imagine using a mouse
with it. I prefer the freedom of the pen.
> PC's (I include the Mac) look as if they do more because they have more
> widgets to click but really it's a failure of the interface to present so
> many options and so much clutter to the user. NOS takes the approach of
> hiding a lot of the complexity without losing functionality.
I don't know how well the soup model would translate to the desktop. I
really prefer the file-based system on my desktop, but prefer the soup
structure on my Newton. On my Newton, I want my data integrated, but not
always on the desktop. Sometimes I wish my name and calendar information
were more "portable" or integrated with the whole system, but Office has
helped somewhat with that problem (albeit a bit buggily) [sic].
> IMO we have to
> ditch application-centric modes to data-centric models before we can real=
ly
> move forward.
Aaaaaahhhh! Please, not OpenDoc again! I struggled with that, trying to mak=
e
it work, even years after Apple gave up on it (I used Cyberdog and Wav
almost exclusively!) before I finally realized the truth that
document-centric is not the answer to our problems. The problem ends up
coming down to this. Would you rather use a multi-tool (And don't go
defending your Leatherman=AE, Rich) to do serious work, or a dedicated,
professional tool? Pros have tools that do very specific tasks, but do them
excellently. Those multi-tools have their place, but they just can't do
everything. Think of Opendoc as your Leatherman=AE tool or Swiss Army Knife=AE
of the software realm, and Photoshop as the PorterCable drill.
One problem that OpenDoc had was that when you started getting complex, you
suddenly had software bloat that made Photoshop look like a lightweight in
comparison, when it came to resource use. Simple documents worked fine in
OpenDoc, but complex ones, like you might want to use PageMaker or Quarx
for, just don't work, as the resources necessary (to add an editor for each
and every part--each taking its own memory heap and processor time) would
bloat a document way beyond what the dedicated apps needed. This, of course=
,
leads to instability and crashes. I've lost enough documents, thanks to
this. :-)
Give me the application-specific model any day. :-)
--=20
Jon Glass
Krakow, Poland
<jonglass_at_usa.net>
<glasshaus5_at_aol.com>
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage
over the man who can't read them."
--Mark Twain
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